


Changes

by FelicityGS



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Oh, Sam is briefly mentioned, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivors Guilt, and get some poor soul's hopes up for good steve and sam banter, and it was less tough, as working it in properly didn't fit the tone of the story, but i feel not developed or there enough for me to comfortably tag him in the characters, but it's only gently implied Steve is still Cap America, frigga is dead, human/superhero au, it was specifically requested tho, running as therapy, the airbnb thing was tough but then i went on a trip to osaka and used it for the first time ever, this is so so so so late i am sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 16:04:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13616820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelicityGS/pseuds/FelicityGS
Summary: You have one new message from your AirBNB host.He opens it.I hope you’re enjoying your stay! Sam says he let you in and everything looks good. I’ll be landing tonight, so I’ll meet you soon. :) If you need anything, I can pick it up on the way home, so just let me know.Steve





	Changes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



The screen is white. It has been white for hours now.

Loki closes the laptop without saving. He stands up, walks to the small kitchen. He takes the mug he bought that afternoon off the shelf, fills it full of room temperature tea. He stares blankly at the wall. He holds it.

_(As blank as_ —)

The mug shatters when he throws it against the floor, liquid flies outward, and he’s shaking with fury and rage he can’t voice; his teeth creak as he grinds them together. Tea splashes against his socks, quickly sinks into the white cotton and stains them.

He stands in the quiet for a while; he can’t stop shaking. He stares at the tea and ceramic on the floor, trying to find a pattern, trying to divine anything from it.

There’s nothing to be divined.

He takes a breath. He does not stop shaking.

“This is fine,” he says, staring at the ruin.

He gets a towel and mops up the tea, then a broom to sweep up the remains. He throws them all out; he does not bother to try and salvage the mug. There’s nothing to be saved.

( _Just like always_.)

Last, he takes his socks off, tosses them in the laundry, and then he goes to shower. He stays in there a long time, trembling, eyes closed tight and takes short breaths. He forces them long until he forgets and they shorten once more.

Eventually, he gets out. He has stopped shaking. He puts on his pajama pants, then brushes his teeth. Flosses. Then he walks out, past where the laptop sits unharmed, and to the bedroom and a bed that is not his, and he lays down.

Eventually, he falls asleep.

***

The next day, he goes to the cafe. The laptop weighs heavy on his shoulder as he pays for his coffee and a new mug.

“You must like them,” the barista says, obligated rapport.

“Yes,” Loki agrees, and then he goes and sits and opens the screen again, back to the blank screen.

His phone buzzes before his coffee is called.

_You have one new message from your AirBNB host._

He opens it.

> _I hope you’re enjoying your stay! Sam says he let you in and everything looks good. I’ll be landing tonight, so I’ll meet you soon. :) If you need anything, I can pick it up on the way home, so just let me know._
> 
> _Steve_

Loki considers; he does not want to be friends with his host, though he knows some people who do.

He writes back:

> _Everything is fine. I do not need anything._

He does not sign his name.

His coffee is called; he gets it, adds enough sugar it cannot dissolve, and sits back in front of a white screen.

(Part of him, quiet, wonders why he should even try.)

***

> _When the world was very very young, there was a mother. She was radiant--her hair and her eyes golden, her cheeks flush and rosy_. _She had two sons, one golden as her, and one dark, with naught but her slenderness to show their relation_.

_Shit_ , he thinks; he tries to leave it, because a start is better than nothing at all. He goes back to the apartment. He sets the laptop on the table, and he goes to the kitchen. He sets the pot on to boil, and he watches as the steam slowly starts to rise, and then, just before it whistles, he takes it off. He adds honey and the tea bag, and then the water, and he watches the water slowly darken.

He takes it back with him.

He will not work tonight ( _as if he’s worked at all in the last year_ ). He turns on the television ( _wastes his time_ ) and stares at people improving homes he will never be able to afford in places he will never be able to go.

He turns the television off. He takes a sip of tea. He opens the laptop. He stares at the words.

He deletes them.

He closes the laptop again and goes to the kitchen. He stares at the wall. He drinks lukewarm overly sweet tea and he tries, very hard, to think of nothing. His grip is tight on the mug; he notes how white his knuckles are, notes the rage bubbling in his stomach, squeezing all the air out of his chest--

_no stories left to tell, and isn’t he worthless, useless, n o t h i n g_

\--and before the fury breaks, he hears the door open.

His teeth ache, muscles drawn tight but not allowed to release. He stares at the entryway to the kitchen. He listens as shoes are removed, watches a shadow cast across the living room floor.

( _A room, just a room, with a host who is often gone, yes,_ that _was a reasonable idea, wasn’t it_ —

It will save him money on broken mugs, he says to himself, and he grins with his teeth when his host rounds the corner, tall and broad and blond as his brother ( _mother_ ) and eyes to match.

“You must be Steve,” he says, and his voice only shakes a little.

***

Steve is quiet. When asked what he does, Steve says _run_ and _read_ and _research_ and does not mention his job. He does not bother Loki. Loki has the time and quiet alone in the apartment to write,

(he has nothing to write)

which he uses to stare at a blank screen. 

> _When I was six, she would brush my hair and tie it back and not mind that I did not ever want to cut it. When I was eight, she taught me how to wear heels, and when I was twelve she took me to get my ears pierced_

He stops.

No one wants his honesty. No one cares.

He deletes it. He closes the laptop and leaves his room. He goes to the kitchen and he stares at the wall and he does not throw his coffee cup.

Steve is in the living room. He is reading, like he said he does.

“You run?” Loki asks.

“Hmm?” Steve looks up. “Oh. Yeah, I went at seven, I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Where do you run?”

“Over by the memorials--I can show you, if you want.”

“Yes. I am going now,” Loki says. Then, “After I change.”

“Sure.”

Loki changes clothes. Steve shows him. He runs.

( _only because he cannot throw anything, not with Steve there, only because he needs the violence)_

The ache settles deep in his lungs, his thighs, his calves; it creeps up his lower back and abdomen as he keeps his upper body level, and his throat is raw as if he has let loose the scream caged in his chest, and he does not stop--one loop, then two, then three, until at last there is only the steady _one-two-three-FOUR one-two-three-FOUR_ of his feet on pavement and his heart pounding in his ears and how many times he’s looped ceases to matter--only that he is running.

When he stops, his mind is empty. He stares at the clouds above, billowing, shadows deep in their folds.

(If he pretends, it’s almost like finding peace.)

***

Loki does not touch his laptop the rest of the day.

***

He wakes; he can hear Steve in the other room. He did not dream (why would he), and he stares at the ceiling. He thinks of the blank document on his laptop. His day already lays before him--try to write, delete it, violence. Will Steve be here to see it?

He looks at his phone--6:55am. Steve is going for a run.

(There was something like peace, in the silence.)

He gets up.

“Mind if I go with you?” Loki asks.

Steve blinks, but then he smiles--it is warm and bright. Friendly.

“Sure,” Steve says. “I have to warn you though, I’m pretty fast.”

“That’s fine.”

***

Steve is fast; Loki is grateful. They meet Sam--a friend of Steve’s, with eyes as kind--and they run together, at least for a while.

It is not enough; not hard enough to ease the dark thing already in Loki’s chest, without food and without coffee, without

( _why should he have anything, he is already empty_ )

a way to make it through this day.

“Go on without me,” Loki says an hour later--running with people only makes his breast ache at the pretense of companionship. “I will see you later.”

Steve and Sam exchange a glance. Loki pretends not to see.

“Alright,” Steve says, and at the next intersection, Loki goes left where they go right. For one dazzling, brilliant moment, he feels alive as he finally allows himself to run as fast and hard as he can.

***

_Mother, I am sorry_.

***

“So what brought you to DC?” Steve asks. He is checking the oven. Loki dices onions and allows his eyes to sting from the smell.

“A funeral.”

“Oh.” Steve sets a pan on the stovetop, drizzles oil in. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was a year ago.”

“Still.”

Loki entertains the notion that Steve’s sympathy is real. A pleasant enough fiction. He swipes the onions (and the notion) into the bowl, and begins on the garlic.

“So this time…?” Steve prompts, aware Loki has not answered his question.

“A deadline, and to visit the grave.” Neither of which he has managed.

(How can he do either?)

“But mostly the deadline,” he says. He glances at Steve, but Steve is focused on preparing the chicken--not looking at Loki.

(Why would he?)

( _It should have been him, he should have been the one made into a ghost, haunting the empty spaces, and no one would have no—_ )

“Are you a writer, then?”

“When I am not an instructor.”

“Right, at Grand View, it was on your profile.”

Loki blinks; he did not expect Steve to look, or remember. Most hosts don’t.

“English department, right?” Steve looks up. Loki nods. “And you?”

“Boring stuff,” Steve says. “Not very useful, not the same way what you do is. Government stuff.”

“I see.”

It is small talk; Loki wants to hate it, but it is—

(hard, to feel anything, except the nameless thing in his chest that he sweated out this morning)

\--nice. There was so much _silence_ in Des Moines.

(so much left blank)

*** 

> _There are choices that can’t be undone. He knew that, but he also knew that there are so many choices that pile up that it’s impossible to know which matter and which don’t._
> 
> _When he was twenty-five, he made a choice and it killed his mother, and he never knew until he landed on the other side of the globe_.

Loki stares at the words, pounded out with each step of his run. His body aches as much as his chest. His calves are tight. He stands at the kitchen counter, stretches one calf, then the other. He is still drenched in sweat from his run. The laptop in front of him on the counter stares back.

He hears the bathroom door open. He highlights the text, pauses with his finger over the backspace key.

“Oh, you’re back,” Steve says.

Loki shifts, stretches his other leg behind him.

“Yes,” he says, and closes the laptop lid.

***

The deadline is self-imposed--two weeks, in this city his mother loved, before the anniversary of her death. Two weeks to try and force it out before he goes back to another semester of grading and silence and a city he used to love.

(It wasn’t his fault. He did not kill her, it would have happened anyway, survivor’s guilt is a common experience among _—_

_except it_ was _his fault, wasn’t it, they all know, it’s why no one calls, no one writes, why there is so much_ silence—

***

“I don’t want to assume anything, but if you need—” Steve stops talking as Loki looks up from the document, another paragraph eked out. Steve looks… awkward, but sincere, and Loki has to still his hand on the screen of the laptop, to keep his muscles tense and tight so he does not slam it closed. “My mother died, too. When I was younger. If you need to talk to someone about it.”

Loki stares at Steve. He continues to do so, long past when he should have replied. Steve opens his mouth, and Loki speaks.

“We are strangers.”

Steve closes his mouth. Loki stares at him and with control closes his laptop. The screen does not snap against the base.

“This is not,” Loki continues, “a movie. This is not a buddy comedy, where two people find themselves friends by chance, or worse still, fall in love. I am paying you to stay here, in your spare room, and next week I will leave, the day after she died, and we will never speak again, beyond the courtesy of leaving kind reviews of the other on AirBNB.”

Steve looks away first, jaw tight. Loki watches it twitch, Steve choking down interruptions.

“That isn’t why I offered,” Steve finally says, after Loki does not continue speaking. He meets Loki’s gaze once more; there is hurt there.

(Loki could have told Steve all he knows how to do is hurt.)

“Is that so?” Loki shrugs, gathers up his laptop. “My mistake.”

He does not say sorry.

It is eleven, the sun long set and the air chill, when Loki leaves the apartment. He walks a block, two, and then his pace begins to quicken until he is running, street lamps and city lights his only guides.

(There’s no peace this time, when his body finally forces him to stop.)

***

He rests his head against his knees, back against the brick pillar of the graveyard’s gate. He keeps his eyes shut, and counts his blessings that at this hour, he cannot go in.

He should go back. He should apologize to Steve, as loathsome as the thought is. Behaviour his mother had tried to instill in him, as much as it never managed to fully take.

The ground under him is hard. The sweat has begun to cool. He shivers in his tee and shorts. He should go back--the walk will be long, will stretch out muscles that already protest even just being at rest. Apologize in the morning.

(If he hadn’t failed at death at sixteen, she would still be alive.)

He squeezes his eyes shut. He takes one breath, then two. Then another. Eventually, he stops counting. He pushes himself to his feet, rests his hand against the brickwork and stares through the gates.

Even now, a year later, he knows the way.

“Enough,” he says; his voice rasps.

He turns and begins to limp back.

***

Steve does not look at Loki when Loki follows him out in the morning. Loki cannot keep their usual pace; he knows this and tries anyway. His head pounds and his legs feel like they might fall off. Already, his lungs burn.

(This cannot continue.)

“I am sorry,” he rasps as he slows, bends over and rests his hands on his knees.

Steve stops, turns. Looks at him.

Loki swallows down the lump in his throat.

“For--last night. And… this.” He gestures at the road.

Steve just considers him; he does not move closer, his face does not change. This time Loki looks away, stares at the pavement under his feet.

“Come on,” Steve says. Loki startles when Steve’s hand touches his shoulder. “Sam will beat us there at this rate.”

Loki looks up at him. The sun is behind Steve, makes his hair a fuzzy and ill-formed halo.

They set off again, slower.

“It was a car accident,” Loki tells Steve.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Steve says. “You were--well, you could have put it better, but you’re not wrong that we’re strangers and I should probably have minded my own business.” He laughs, a warm and low thing.

“Yes,” Loki says.

“How are your legs?”

***

They do not talk about it again.

( _“My mother died, too. When I was younger. If you need to talk to someone about it.”_ )

Loki does not… _need_ to speak about it.

The runs are enough.

The compassion, the sincerity.

That is enough; Loki will not take more.

(will not be pitied)

***

Loki stares at his bag, clothes folded and neat. The return flight is tomorrow.

He has still not visited her grave.

He has still not finished writing.

(How can he?)

He can hear Steve in the kitchen.

“Enough,” he says aloud.

( _This cannot continue_.)

He changes.

“I am going to the graveyard,” Loki says as he walks past the kitchen.

His shoes slip on easy, familiar.

“Oh. Do you… want me to—?”

Loki looks up at Steve, in the doorway of the kitchen. The air hangs blank between them.

(He needs to fill it, and not wait for it to be filled.)

“Leftovers are fine,” Loki says, then leaves.

***

His sets an easy lope-- _one-two-three-four--_ but he does not force himself faster. He finds his stride moments after hitting the sidewalk, and it does not falter. The sun begins to set. The sky turns gold, then orange, and he runs without pushing himself to breaking.

(This is peace.)

He feels like he is flying.

When he comes to the graveyard, the gate is closed for the night. He glances left, right, then continues straight. Scaling it is as easy as he imagined, nights ago; he lands on the other side with bent knees, the dirt soft and warm under his palms.

He stands again and begins to walk.

He has nothing with him--no letter, no stories, not even a flower. He plucks a late-blooming rose from a bush as he walks. He lays it at her grave, then sits down next to the headstone, grass tickling and scratching at bare legs.

(Nothing--but himself.)

He tilts his head back, looking at the sky. A breeze ruffles his hair, chills the sweat on his back.

(This is—

_not a mistake_ , he thinks, and grips the grass tight under his hands.

“I am sorry,” he rasps aloud. Then, “I miss you.”

He does not know how long he sits there; the sky has fully darkened when he stands again. He brushes the grass from his shorts, turns to look at the headstone.

“I— it should have been me. Not you.”

He takes a shakey breath. He uses the edge of his shirt to wipe the salt from his eyes.

“It is so quiet without you.” He swallows. “But—”

He stops. Listens to the wind, the distant sound of cars, a waking owl.

“I love you,” he repeats. “Goodbye.” 

***

Steve is still awake when Loki returns. Loki pauses, door clicking shut behind him.

“There’s a plate in the fridge, if you want it,” Steve offers.

“That would be nice,” Loki says. He takes his shoes off and comes inside. 

***

They leave together the next morning. Steve in his running gear, Loki in his clothes, bag slung over his shoulder.

Loki’s cab is waiting at the curb.

“Thank you,” Loki says. “For more than you know.”

“You weren’t a bad guest,” Steve says with a smile.

“Put that on AirBNB. ‘Wasn’t a bad guest. 5 out of 5 stars.’”

Steve laughs. “How do we say goodbye then?”

“Mm, well. Maybe I’ll need to stay in DC again one day,” Loki says.

Steve raises an eyebrow, smile bright. “Oh?”

“And maybe I won’t.”

“Maybe,” Steve says. “Goodbye, Loki.” “Goodbye, Steve.”

Loki gets in the cab. He returns Steve’s wave with slightly less enthusiasm, and watches as the man turns and starts his run. 

***

> _An excellent host; accommodations as described, a pleasant neighborhood and easy to get around. He cooks well and is quite friendly._

Loki considers his review, then submits it. Then, he opens up his messages and clicks on Steve’s name. 

> _I would not be opposed to hearing from you again, unrelated to this. You have my contact information. It’s a bit far, but perhaps coffee sometime?_

He stares at the message for a long while. The white noise of the airport buzzes quietly around him; even here, surrounded by people—

( _Enough. This cannot continue_.)

He hits send.


End file.
